


Sea of Regret

by I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Haunting, Heavy Angst, House Ghosts, Hurt No Comfort, Not Ghosts that can Talk Though, Regret, SO MUCH SADNESS, Vader Misses Obi-Wan, Vader on Tatooine Protecting Luke from Afar, Vader sees Ghosts, not force ghosts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 18:40:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15802329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning/pseuds/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning
Summary: Four years after Revenge of the Sith, Vader found Obi-Wan. Now Vader chooses to replace the guardian he slew offscreen. Thing is, Obi-Wan's house is so full of grief and pain, and Vader keeps seeing echoes of Obi-Wan's sorrow...





	Sea of Regret

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really sure how to tag this for warnings, because I'm not entirely sure where it's going. I don't expect violence, but I could be proven wrong later on. I'm not ready to classify this as horror, because while Obi-Wan's home on Tatoine is haunted, it's not a malicious thing, and Vader knows that.
> 
> Lots of just sadness. We'll warn it that way. So. Much. Sadness.
> 
> This is for those who, after reading [Definition of Deserving](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12015306), wanted Anakin to understand exactly how awful Obi-Wan's life has been.

 

Qui-Gon Jinn's introduction probably should have gone something like this:

Anakin Skywalker, meet Obi-Wan Kenobi. You will crush his heart, rip out his soul, slaughter his loved ones, and he will love you until the day you finally put him out of his misery with a saber through his heart.

The creature clad in black armor looking around Ben Kenobi's mournful little hut certainly felt that the introduction they  _ had  _ been given had been terrible inadequate.

_ You asked him to train me, Qui-Gon. He gave that to you. He gave you everything. He gave  _ me  _ everything. _

But it wasn't enough.

_So I took every last piece of him, tore them out of his hands, left him weeping blood..._

_And then he came here. To make sure my son had the chance at a future. Life, free from the Emperor._

It hadn't felt like that when Vader first  _ found  _ Obi-Wan, found him and slaughtered him. It hadn't even felt like that when he set out to find Obi-Wan's home, to ransack what few possessions Obi-Wan had managed to acquire, because Vader needed to defile  _ everything.  _

But the desert did weird things to the mind, and being lost for forty-eight hours hadn't helped.

Whispers and echoes had haunted Vader as he searched for the Force-damn hut, and by the time he reached it, he wasn't sure he was Vader anymore.

This far out, Sidious' voice couldn't reach. The desert was a world apart, utterly disconnected from the Empire and the hectic pace that had been set since that wretched,  _ wretched  _ night five years ago when the Republic... became something else.

And the sand...

It reminded him of his mother. He kept thinking he saw her face, heard her voice. Felt how confused and lost she felt when looking at him, seeing what he'd done.

It raked his soul open and for the first several hours he'd fought against it, raging against it,  _ furious,  _ but the desert would not release him.

Then there were the memories of a young, grieving Obi-Wan, giving his heart and future and effort to a little stranger child. How much love there was in Obi-Wan's eyes, and in the Force, even if Obi-Wan never quite said it the way Anakin had always wanted to hear it.

_ But I never asked him to say it that way. _

Maybe Qui-Gon had never said it that way to him, either. Maybe he just didn't know that's what Anakin had been looking for.

Vader did not want to remember it, remember  _ any  _ of it, but the desert had no master, and would not obey his demand.

Obi-Wan could have hidden anywhere, lost himself in the depths of Nar Shaddaa, or given up entirely on this galaxy and headed into the Unknown Regions to build a place for himself.

Instead, he buried himself  _ here _ , in this hell, so that Luke could be with family.

_ Because he didn't think himself fit to raise Luke,  _ he realized.  _ Because he thought my choices were his fault. _

His heart ached.

He didn't know who he was. Sidious had spent the last five years  _ telling him  _ who he was, but all of that seemed... far away and unimportant, now. All he was? Was  _ pain. _ And grief.

He missed his mom. He missed his wife. He missed Ahsoka. He missed the son he'd never known. He missed...

He missed Obi-Wan.

He'd kept busy for the last four years, never daring to slow down, lest he  _ feel  _ it, the  _ regret— _

But the desert didn't allow for speed.

In the desert, all you had was  _ yourself. _

He wasn't sure he was Anakin, he wasn't sure he was Vader.

If he  _ was  _ Anakin... if all of this had been what  _ he  _ had done, not some...  _ other person... _

His mind blanked. He couldn't  _ fathom. _

When his mom kissed his forehead at night, just before he fell asleep, what kind of monster had been growing in his bed, with his face, and his name?  
Except, all this time, he'd compartmentalized. Vader did the bad things. Anakin did the good and dumb things.

Anakin was dead.

Dead, dead, dead, and none of what he wanted or regretted or grieved mattered.

The desert scoffed at the follies. At the lies.

In the desert, the man in the black armor realized what  _ name  _ he was called by was  _ meaningless.  _

There was no meaning in asking if Anakin had done something, or if Vader had done it.

There was blood on his hands. So very, very  _ much blood. _

Not all of it had trespassed against him.  _ Most  _ of it  _ hadn't. _

Most of it?

_ He'd  _ been the abuser. The murderer. The strong hutthole who  _ took  _ because he  _ could  _ and because the tears and fighting of a physically weaker being couldn't prevent it.

_ I became a bully. And a bully who  _ kills.

That was who he had become. Had...  _ let himself...  _ become.

He'd taken the Force's gift of prodigious power, and used it to take what little other people had away from them, just like the Tuskens had from him, so long ago. Like the slavers and Watto, and  _ everyone  _ who had ever hurt Shmi Skywalker.

_ I've become one of them. _

He wasn't even really sure what for. Loyalty to a man he wasn't sure had ever honestly cared about him. Looking back, it was painfully obvious how much  _ use  _ Palpatine had gotten out of him over the years. How... much... use...

Yoda smiling up at him, asking him to help him escape the Council and get out of the Temple to go on a solitary mission without anyone knowing. Cheerful and devious and affectionate, that moment when Anakin realized Yoda  _ valued  _ his... unusual... skill set. The  _ disobedience  _ skill set.

Obi-Wan's face, hovering over him as he woke up after losing his arm. The lines of worry and pain and exhaustion, Anakin realizing Obi-Wan had not allowed himself to be treated or showered or rested until after he'd seen Anakin, until the point where Anakin would not wake up alone, abandoned.

And Ahsoka...

Ahsoka had died on Mandalore, she and Rex taking one another out when the chips activated. They'd been buried in a grave together, her sabers on the grave as trophies.

Vader had taken back the sabers, but he could never stand to  _ look  _ at them.

_ I never thought. _

_ I didn't think. _

And after it all, after  _ all  _ of it...

It hadn't even saved Padmé.

_ I brought about the thing I fought so hard to prevent. _ And hadn't that been one of the quandaries of time fripping taught in class, back during his school years in the Temple?

Ahsoka, Padmé, Obi-Wan...

All sacrificed to his fear and anger.

It would be so easy for Luke to fall prey to the same.

Anakin had only ever wanted to keep the three people most important to him safe, and yet look at where they were now.

All three,  _ dead  _ because of him.

He had meant to go storming in to the Lars homestead, wrench Luke away from them and carry him off, screaming and crying—

_ Take him from people he loves and who love him. That had been my  _ first  _ plan. _

As if the toddler hadn't bonded with the people who took care of him.

He sat in a chair, felt Obi-Wan's anguish swirling around it. Anguish, self-doubt, self-hate, guilt, so much guilt—

_ He thought he was responsible for choices an adult me made. I let him think he was responsible for the choices an adult me made. _

But Anakin had  _ always  _ done that. He'd never claimed responsibility for his life, his trajectory, his choices. It had  _ always  _ been someone else's fault.

Palpatine had fed that perspective. Fattened his ego, honed his self-focus.

Until the only person left in Anakin's world was himself.

In a quite  _ painfully  _ they're-all-dead sort of way.

He sighed, the gesture hurting, the mask regulating the sound of it and the speed and shoving air back into his lungs again.

He caught sight of movement and turned his head, saw Obi-Wan, looking exhausted and heartbroken, moving to sit down on the bed.

Vader stood, heart pounding, hurting and arrhythmic. He watched as Obi-Wan lay down, closed his eyes, tried to fall asleep. As Obi-Wan's shoulders shook once, then again—

As his face scrunched and tears slipped from the corners of his eyes to slide to the bed.

A wretched sob tore out of him, and Vader hurried forward, heart in his throat, reaching a hand out to the chest that was moving,  _ crying,  _ alive—

His hand passed through, and the echo of memory faded away.

_ Oh. It's like the Temple, then. _

Some homes, if imbued with enough horror and grief and agony and blood and death, never  _ forgot. _ The echoes of it lingered, voices and doors, blood and footsteps of a person who had walked down the hall years before.

_ Obi-Wan suffered so much that his home retains the imprint of it.  _

So  _ much  _ pain that it was visible.

If Vader lingered, he might see other memories burned into the fabric of time.

He closed his burning eyes, tried to swallow.

Hell  _ was  _ a good place to hide from Sidious. Palpatine would expect Anakin to hide here  _ last,  _ and Luke had already gone three years without being found. 

_ He shouldn't be with me,  _ Anakin realized in grief. And if he put him with Padmé's family, with perfect strangers, Palpatine would find Luke. 

_ I just... I want him to grow up with a normal childhood. Something safe. Something... protected. _

Anakin couldn't stand the thought of just walking away, though. He'd killed the person making sure Luke  _ was  _ safe. He'd slain the guardian.

_ I suppose it's justice, that I take his place. _

And witness the suffering of Obi-Wan Kenobi every day for the rest of his life.

After all...

He'd inflicted it.

 


End file.
